The AIRS Story

The vision for creating artist supported studio spaces within Vancouver schools began in 2015, with the Art and Discovery Studio when a disused art room in Florence Nightingale Elementary, a public school in Vancouver’s East Side, was restored into  a working studio.  Through the support of the Rennie Foundation, the  school  was able to retain an artist-in-residence to work collaboratively with teachers and their students within the studio.  

The Art and Discovery Studio has since become a vibrant hub of shared creative expression, that has contributed to a sense of belonging for individual students and for the whole school community.  It has also established itself as a viable model  for providing rich, ongoing, visual arts  engagement for students within schools.

In 2016, the Art and Discovery studio hosted two community roundtables involving art educators and arts community partners across multiple fields, including universities, public schools, arts organizations and galleries.  These discussions sought to affirm the importance of the visual arts in education and how the use of surplus space and community partnerships could provide opportunities for equitable and sustainable education in the visual arts. One of the outcomes of the roundtable was the expansion to a second artist supported studio space at Sir Pierre Elliott Trudeau Elementary.   The following year, the Vancouver School Board approved studio spaces in four additional elementary schools and the Artist in Residence Studio program or AIRS was officially launched. 

With a pilot partnership with Emily Carr University of Art and Design, sponsoring a studio space at Mount Pleasant Elementary School, and additional funding support from the Vancouver School Board and other financial partners, we expanded the program to 8 schools the following year.   In 2019/20 school year, we added pilot residencies in 6 additional schools, including 2 media arts residencies and launched a mentorship program to give artists opprotunities to grow their experience and capacity working in schools. 

This 2020/21 year, with the commitment of the VSB and artists' creativity and flexibility,  we were able to retain residencies at existing sites even in the midst of a pandemic .  Find out more about the Studios for 2020/21 and our pandemic journey  here

In May 2023, AIRS became an incorporated nonprofit society and were granted charitable status in February of 2024. As an independent society, AIRS is able to expand funding streams and direct governance to support artistic development, high quality, innovative residencies and strong partnerships.  We continue to support ongoing inquiry based research and advocacy that  foregrounds the vital role of the arts within education today.  AIRS is grateful for  its unique  partnership and collaboration with the VSB to develop and sustain a vision and working model for equitable access to high quality and socially relevant arts education for the learning and wellbeing of elementary students within the Vancouver School District.